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Lady Cora in a fountain of blood... it's Downton Tarantino style! CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews last weekend's TV

By Christopher Stevens for Daily Mail

Published: 20:31 EST, 18 October 2015 | Updated: 01:13 EST, 19 October 2015

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Downton Abbey

Rating:

Homeland

Rating:

They’re a ruthless lot, your British upper classes. Within moments of Lord Grantham’s spectacularly gory collapse at the dinner table in Downton Abbey (ITV), his family had resumed their schemes and manouveures.

Lady Cora (Elizabeth McGovern), her face and dress spattered with her husband’s blood, didn’t even hang around to see his body lifted on to a stretcher before she cornered her mother-in-law to resume their duel over the future of the cottage hospital.

Downstairs it was a different story. Carson was tottering round like a stunned sheep, bleating occasionally. Mrs Patmore, that earthiest of souls, was speaking in philosophical riddles.

It was as though this week's episode of Downton Abbey had been directed by Quentin Tarentino with these bloody scenes at the dinner table in a show with all the finesse of a pig in a tutu

Even the diabolical Barrow, a man for whom the misfortune of others is the sweet breath of life itself, was surprised to find himself feeling a little sorry for the poorly peer.

Not so Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery). Her face lit up like a fruit machine paying out the jackpot as Papa was carried away. More manly than ever in a shirt and tie, she might as well have worn a badge that said: ‘I’m in charge now!’

For all the nonsense over the years about socialism and suffrage that the show has dabbled with, this was the closest Downton has ever come to a real comment on the class divide. To judge by Cora and Mary, too much privilege can make a girl heartless.

Perhaps, though, this subtle insight was an accident. It was certainly out of place in an episode that had all the finesse of a pig in a tutu.

Pigs were an integral part of the plot, as kitchenmaid Daisy’s finagling finally bore fruit and her father-in-law Mr Mason took over the tenancy of Yew Tree Farm and its sties. ‘He’s a good man and I hear pigs are his speciality,’ pronounced Lady Mary, and the matter was settled.

New boy Andy (Michael Fox), a man who clearly harbours few ambitions for marital harmony and a quiet life, has set his cap at the disagreeable Daisy. To impress her, he intends to learn all about pigs — what could be more romantic in the Downton universe?

Lord Grantham’s grumbling ulcer burst literally over dinner. He lurched to his feet like Frankenstein’s monster, and arched his back as though a million volts of electricity was pumping through him

But the pig-play was subtlety itself, compared to the moment Lord Grantham’s grumbling ulcer burst — literally over dinner.

He lurched to his feet like Frankenstein’s monster, and arched his back as though a million volts of electricity was pumping through him.

A fountain of blood erupted from his mouth, looping across the table and hosing his wife in scarlet. It was as if Julian Fellowes had handed the scene to ultra-violent film director Quentin Tarantino, and we were watching a gentry-exploitation movie called Reservoir Lords, or Posh Fiction.

A fountain of blood erupted from his mouth, looping across the table and hosing his wife in scarlet

The only reassuring Fellowes touch was that, as Lord Grantham lay at death’s door, there wasn’t merely a doctor on hand to save him. The Minister for Health was there, in the person of Neville Chamberlain (Rupert Frazer).

Being a toff, Chamberlain didn’t look alarmed to see his host develop symptoms of ebola before the cheese course. He simply hung around and related some amusing anecdotes. It’s hard to rattle a genuine aristo.

For sheer cold courage, Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes) took the prize in Homeland (C4) as she sauntered into a Hezbollah lair at a Lebanese refugee camp and slung a backpack containing $40,000 onto a terrorist commander’s lap.

Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes) is back in series 5 of Homeland (C4), sauntering into a Hezbollah lair at a Lebanese refugee camp and slinging a backpack containing $40,000 onto a terrorist commander’s lap

She was buying safe passage for her publicity-hungry billionaire boss as he posed for photo-opportunities with homeless Syrians but, with the magnificently paranoid logic that makes this show addictive, it turned out the extremists weren’t interested in the super-rich poser. They wanted to kill Carrie.

Our heroine took down a suicide bomber, drove through a makeshift minefield and dealt with a terrorist in her hotel bedroom.

The episode belted along, confirming that Homeland is back at its best.

But all that peril was just the warm-up: Carrie’s real enemy is the man who adores her, cold-eyed assassin Peter Quinn.

His latest assignment, spelled out in code like a crossword clue, from letters concealed in newspaper ads, read: m-a-t-h-i-s-o-n.

Unless, of course, he’d read it wrong and the real target is actually Johnny Mathis. That really would be a pig’s breakfast of a mistake.